Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Today we read prophecies against lots of the enemies of God's people. They're pagan nations who, like God's people, have also been acting wickedly. First up in chapter 25 are the Ammonites, and God's main beef with them is their schadenfreude.
If you're not familiar with that weird-sounding word, it just means they find pleasure in someone else's struggle. If you really want to simplify it, schadenfreude is the reason we laugh at videos of people slipping on ice. But for the Ammonites, it was far more sinister. They loved watching the temple be defiled, the land be destroyed, and the people of Judah be killed and exiled. They literally celebrated death and destruction.
We know from yesterday that the exiles of Judah weren't allowed to mourn the destruction of Jerusalem since, after all, they were responsible for it. But that's a far cry from celebrating it. God says he will send people from the east to destroy the Ammonites. And we already know from prior prophecies in chapter 21 that those people from the east are the Babylonians. This is where the Babylonians take the second fork in the road after having destroyed Jerusalem first.
Next up are Moab and Seir, but probably just Moab. There might be a note in your Bible that the word Seir doesn't appear in a lot of the ancient texts, so we'll just deal with Moab here. The Moabites are distant relatives of the Israelites, but their sin is that they didn't acknowledge Israel's unique relationship with Yahweh. They regarded them as indistinct from the pagan nations.
Then God moves on to Edom. They acted with vengeance and cruelty toward Judah. So in this particular oracle, God says he will use Israel to punish Edom in response. Israel will be the tool God uses to demonstrate his wrath and anger. Philistia had the same sin as Edom, but God doesn't specify who their attackers will be. He just promises that justice will be served.
In chapter 26, God brings a harsh word to Tyre, a little refresher on who they are. They're a major shipping port located north of Israel, and the main part of the city of Tyre is actually an island. They are wealthy, and because of their trade, they have relationships with all the powerful nations of the day. And for a long time, the kings of Israel had an amicable relationship with the king of Tyre. He even supplied the cedar for David to build his palace and for Solomon to build the temple. But things went wrong with Tyre over the years.
And when Jerusalem falls, Tyre thinks Judah's demise will result in their advancement. They don't care what's been lost. They only care that they will benefit from it. Ezekiel says God will send the Babylonians to attack Tyre and destroy it.
One of the problems that probably won't be resolved in this seven-minute podcast is that things went somewhat differently than Ezekiel prophesied. The Babylonians did lay siege to Tyre for 13 years, but it didn't completely fall until later when it was attacked by the Greeks. There are a handful of ways commentators respond to this. Some don't address it at all because they think it's a non-issue.
Some say that Ezekiel was primarily using hyperbolic and metaphorical language here, so there's a little bit of flexibility on what would shake out because it isn't intended to be read with such literal detail. And that's definitely a possibility. And if you wonder what I mean by hyperbolic language, here's an example. Ezekiel says Babylon would build a siege mound against Tyre, knowing full well that it's an island. You can't build a siege mound against an island. So this seems to be intentionally puffed up language.
Others say there was no timeline given on when this prophecy would be fulfilled, so the Greek attack suffices. There are a few other viewpoints and options, but here's why I'm not concerned about reconciling it. Ezekiel himself acknowledges all this later in chapter 29, verse 18. So if he's not losing sleep over it, even knowing that false prophets get the death penalty, then I'm not either.
And we already know that prophecies are almost always fulfilled in ways that don't seem initially obvious. Metaphors and imagery set us up to understand it one way, but then in hindsight we say, oh, that's what that meant? It's so obvious now.
So I trust that God did what he intended from the start, even if it doesn't literally happen the way it's metaphorically written. The final chapter of today's reading is a lament for Tyra, and it demonstrates at length how wealthy the city is. They're massively influential on an international scale, and that's not always a good thing. Sure, they traded clothes and silver and honey and wheat, but they also traded ivory and human beings.
And even this lament records the people of Tyre as being arrogant. Today, amidst all this destruction, my God shot was his protective nature. Throughout all these prophecies, it's evident that God is against the people who are against God's people. Even after all Israel has done to betray him and break his heart, he's still committed to working justice toward their enemies.
God's protective nature and his promise of justice is good news for us because it means we don't have to take things into our own hands. We can trust him to mete out justice even more precisely than we ever could and in his perfect timing. I can lay down my weapons, even if they're just words. And I can lay down my bitterness because it says I don't trust him. And I can lay down my will, knowing his is better anyway.
He is my defender, and He's where the joy is. We love hearing from you, but we also love seeing you in all the places you recap. Maybe you recap at your work desk or on your drive to work, or maybe you're on vacation and you get to recap in the mountains today. No matter where you are or what you're doing, take a picture, post it on social media, and tag us. We are at The Bible Recap everywhere.